She appears to have successfully managed the bear threat through the months she was alone. The accounts do not document any bear attacks on Ada. Whether this was because the bears did not approach closely, because they were deterred by her presence and actions, or because she successfully avoided dangerous encounters is not fully clear. What is clear is that she was alive and uninjured when the Donaldson arrived, which means the bears did not kill her, which means her management of the bear situation worked well enough.
## The Months Alone: What Two Months in the Arctic Actually Means
There is a clarification that the available accounts do not always make clearly: Ada Blackjack was the sole human on Wrangel Island for approximately two months — from Knight’s death on June 23, 1923, to the Donaldson’s arrival around August 19-20, 1923. The two-year figure that sometimes appears in accounts refers to the total duration of the expedition, not the duration of her solitude.
Two months alone in the Arctic is not a minor thing. Two months in conditions that included regular polar bear presence, the need to hunt and trap to eat, the maintenance of shelter and equipment, the management of the psychological weight of complete isolation, and the constant uncertainty about whether a rescue ship would come — two months of this is an extraordinary thing.
But two years alone would be a different and somewhat mythologized story, and the distinction matters for honesty. What Ada actually survived was: two years on a remote Arctic island under increasingly difficult conditions, most of that time as a member (albeit a marginal and complicated member) of a group, and then approximately two months as the sole human present before rescue.